Short stories for seven-year-olds and up

Subway Zombies

I keep telling myself, ‘Scott, the zombies are going to get you in those subway tunnels if you keep using them!’ But I don’t listen to myself. The tunnels are just too convenient! There are maps to everywhere I want to go. It can be hot, cold, rainy, or snowing outside; but it’s always nice inside the tunnels. There are also less places for zombies to hide. If I’m walking through the city streets; they can come out of an alley, a store, or reach out from under a car and grab my ankle. That’s why I like the subway tunnels.

The zombies almost got me the other day though. I was caught by surprise by a group of them at a transfer station. They must have been turned into zombies on their way to a hockey game because they were all wearing red team jerseys. I ended up on an upper level platform surrounded by zombie sports fans on the platform below. I was safe because there was a sealed entrance behind me, and I had switched the direction of the escalators leading from the bottom level where the zombies were to the level I was on. I made all of the escalators leading up to my level run in the downstairs direction. Zombies are clumsy and uncoordinated, so they couldn’t climb up fast enough to reach the top of the stairs. I was able to do that using some keys I had scavenged off the body of a subway station manager. I was safe, but I was also trapped.

As I thought about what I could do to get myself out of the situation, I heard footsteps. It was like tapping in eighth notes: tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap. I looked in the direction of the sound and saw a man run into the subway station. You can tell when a man is running toward something and when he is running away from something. The man had a look of horror on his face and ran clumsily. Fear makes a person dumb. The man was definitely being chased.

I couldn’t see the zombies he ran from right away because the entrance he had used was around a corner, but I could hear them. They were groaning and growling and yelling. It is normally a horrible sound, but there were little pauses as they fell down the stairs that made it a little bit funny to me. I have seen them fall downstairs and just break apart or burst open. It’s disgusting because their meat is all tenderized and beat up and they are oozing all over when they finally reach the landing. It gets really interesting when there’s a group of zombies because they gather up like idiotic fire ants in water as they roll down.

I was stuck myself at the time, so there was not much I could do to help the man. The most I could do was tell him where things were from my higher point of view. The zombies that were chasing him finally came around the corner. They looked like they had been turned into zombies at work. There were men in suits and women in modest dresses limping after the man. I had to do something to help him. So, I called to him to let him know where I was.

I yelled, “Hey, Mr! Up here!” He looked up, saw me, and started running toward me. I remembered there were zombies surrounding the escalators that led up to my level. I tried to tell him not to come to me, but it was too late: the Zombies that had trapped me spotted him and began to chase him. So, he ended up pursued by two groups of zombies: zombie fans and zombie office workers.

From where he was, the man only saw one choice. There was an exit all the way on the other side of the station. He sprinted down the platform to try to get to that exit. The two groups of zombies merged and blended into one big group and proceeded to chase him. I counted about thirteen zombies in the mob.

I thought he could outrun them. It looked to me for about a minute like he might get away. Then, more zombies emerged from the other end. The new group looked like former subway employees. They stumbled comically down the stairs leading to the exit the man intended to use. He probably didn’t laugh.

The man almost fell over when he tried to stop after seeing the new group of zombies. Since there were zombies in front and behind him, it looked to me like he only had one choice: he had to jump inside of the trench where the train tracks were and try to cross to the other side of the station. I think he figured that out too. I saw him move to the edge of the platform and look down at the tracks. If he was going to do it, he needed to act quickly because I heard the rumble of an arriving train. The trains were automated, so many of them continued to run even after the zombies had infested everything.

To my surprise, the man ran toward the smaller group of zombies. It was easy to become infected; so, I thought this was the end for him. Maybe he wanted to go out fighting. When he reached the first zombie in the group, he grabbed it by the shirt and threw it into the trench of subway tracks. He grabbed a zombie woman by the hair and flung her off the platform too. Then, he pushed a zombie man who was already near the edge of the platform onto the tracks. I watched him wrestle, push, and kick the entire group off the platform and into the trench. At the same time, he kicked the faces of the zombies who tried to crawl back up onto the platform.

As promised by the rumble I had heard earlier, a train arrived. It rolled right over the zombies. I could not see under the train, but there was no way they survived. It probably looked like someone had spilled meat soup under the train.

I had to jump for joy and let out a cheer for the man after he triumphed. He saved both of us. And he did it without getting a scratch! I expected him to walk over to me afterward, or wave and walk out of the station, or even board the train when it stopped. Instead, I watched him cemented to the floor staring openmouthed at the train in front of him. I could only see the top of the train from where I stood, so I didn’t know what happened to make him pause like that.

When the train doors opened, a new group of zombies stumbled out and went after the man. The man snapped out of his shock, ran down the platform, skated around the corner, and stumbled up the stairs he used to come into the station. Since the zombies coming off the train chased after him, I ran in the opposite direction and escaped.